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The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has received 3,000 complaints in the past five years from British Columbians regarding the online sexual exploitation of children.

“These complaints have come from parents or children themselves — about five per cent of complaints are from children,” said Signy Arnason, director of Cybertip.ca, which is operated by the Winnipeg-based Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

On Wednesday, 15-year-old Amanda Todd of Port Coquitlam was found dead at home, five weeks after posting a video online detailing how she was harassed and bullied after embarrassing photographs of her were circulated to her friends, relatives and schoolmates.

Arnason said the tragedy highlights an “enormous social problem.”

“It’s a call to action for all Canadians. It’s something we can no longer ignore,” she said.

In the past 10 years Cybertip.ca has receive more than 67,000 complaints from across Canada concerning child online sexual exploitation.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Arnason believes.

“It’s far more pervasive than we can imagine because at the end of the day, kids don’t want to tell anyone that this is going on.

“They feel embarrassed, scared of punishment from their parents. They also fear that if they tell and the situation isn’t managed properly then bullying from their peers will escalate because they’ve got them into trouble,” she said.

Arnason said the reluctance of children to talk about the problem, combined with the fact that only 10 to 15 per cent of Canadians are aware of her organization, leads her to believe the actual range of online sexual exploitation is enormous.

Arnason said all instances of sexual exploitation reported to Cybertip are then reported to police and, as a result, 119 people have been arrested.

“One of those individuals was trying to exploit 50 children,” she said.

“The super disturbing part is that this is like lightening striking this child — she got slammed with this all at once and despite what she did she couldn’t get away,” said Horton, whose organization provides Internet safety education for children, parents and educators.

The tragedy highlights the need for parents to talk to their children about the dangers of going online, she said.

“They need to tell kids not to talk about sex with strangers online,” she said.

Some parents find this uncomfortable but they should overcome any reluctance because so much is at stake, she said.

“Tell your kids not to let anyone take sexual images of them — ever — and don’t supply them to anyone,” she said.

All computers should be located in a public space at home and children should not be allowed to take hand-held devices into their bedrooms.

“They should all be left on the kitchen table when they go to bed,” she said.

Online education of children should begin in Grade 3, said Horton.

“This isn’t going to assuage the hurt and the outpouring of grief and despair and disbelief that something like this could happen to a child, but Grade 3 is when they start to go online,” said Horton.

“Fifty per cent of youth age 8 to 11 have no idea how to change the privacy setting on the social network sites they are visiting,” she said.

On Thursday, during a presentation to students between the ages of nine and 11, Horton found 35 per cent had Facebook profiles when the minimum age for being on Facebooks is 13.

“We tell our kids all the time to be truthful and so when they go online they are using their legal name, their real addresses and postal codes and their real birthday. We need to stop this. We need to say it’s OK to set up a virtual identity that can be used online that doesn’t reveal all your personal information,” she said.

Horton said she’s told her son to use his first name twice when he sets up online accounts and she has given him the postal code for the Mission RCMP station to use instead of his own.

“The Internet is a dangerous place because it’s an adult environment. We don’t let our kids go to casinos or bars or other adult entertainment venues, yet we’re letting children go into an adult online environment and we need to take a look at it.

“We’re not going to stop kids from lying about how old they are online so we have to do it from an education and dialogue point of view. Parents need to have conversations with their children about their online conduct from an early age right to adulthood,” she said.

Dr. Tyler Black, clinical head of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Emergency Unit at B.C. Children’s Hospital said the causes of suicide are never simple.

“Suicidal thinking is a very complex thing. I don’t want people to rush to judgment that bullying is the sole cause of any suicide. It’s very complex and many factors flow into it,” Black said.

“We believe the roots of suicidal thinking go way back to how someone handles stress. I thinks it’s important to have an opportunity to speak with children about the way they handle stress, what they can do if they are in trouble and who they can talk to for help,” he said.

There are two government emergency services for children to access: YouthinBC.com, which provides online counselling (866-661-3311) 24-hours a day, and the Kids Help Phone, a national service for children (1-800-668-6868).

“It’s unfortunate when someone believes they have to go through this type of torment alone because there are so many services that would be prepared to help if only they knew about it.

“But often people subjected to any sort of injury and abuse are isolated by the nature of that act. Part of the problem is they are made to feel like they can’t speak to anyone about it, so unlocking that part can go a long way to addressing the problems underneath,” he said.

One of the biggest concerns in suicide research, Black said, is that the largest proportion of those who die by suicide do so without accessing services set up to help them.

“So we need to do a better job of identifying those who need our services and making sure that they don’t fall through the cracks.

Black said only 25 per cent of youth who die by suicide have ever been hospitalized, and in the year before suicide, only 40 per cent talk to a professional for any reason.

The McCreary Centre has done research that shows one in seven B.C. youth feel so stressed they can’t cope, and one in 14 have so much despair in their life they don’t think anything is worthwhile.

“The numbers are surprisingly high. The professionals in B.C. equipped to deal with it are not seeing that many adolescents coming in. So there is a large percentage of people suffering who don’t access treatment.

“So it tells us how important it is to reach out to people with education rather than wait for them to come to us,” he said.

Despite all this, the number of adolescent suicides is dropping, said Black, with recent figures showing the yearly suicide rates of people 10-to-24 years old decreasing by 23 per cent.

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